Shadows of the New Moon
by Wolffie
Summary: A young woman is gifted by Luna to become one of her Lunar Exalted, and her fellows seek her out to train her as their newest member. But Luna's chosen do not always agree with one another.


**Disclaimer: I do not own the setting of Exalted. Lunar Exalted, Solar Exalted, and all other references to items contained within that setting are owned by White Wolf. Vesalia, however, IS my character, so that at least I can claim. Read & Review if you want, flame or compliments accepted, hope you enjoy!**

The storm was quick, lasting only a single day, but it was ferocious, leveling small port towns by constantly battering them with 40-foot swells and overturning any vessels that did not take the proper precautions. As the storm had approached, the festive air aboard the yacht had shattered as the partygoers went below decks and the crew came above decks. Though the ship had weathered such storms in the past, they had never left without taking something in return.

Such it was that, after the storm had passed, someone who had previously been aboard the ship was now several miles away from it. Clinging to a plank of wood from a shattered lifeboat, the topless girl tried her best not to succumb to the unrelenting Sea. The swells had become smaller since the worst of the storm had passed, but they were still in excess of 10 feet and could pull her under. At least, the sailors had said they would, and since she wasn't a Tya and had no sailing experience, she could only go by what they had said.

Of course, she also remembered some of the tales about the things that lurked beneath the waves. While everyone knew of the Fair Ones and the sharkmen, the sailors also spoke of other things, beneath the waves and just out of sight. She had heard of a monster that had two eyes the size of her entire body, with an arrow at the top of its head, and with tentacles that numbered in the thousands and were long enough to wrap entirely around one of the huge cargo vessels of the Guild.

She shook her head as those thoughts inspired terror so great that she went stark still for a second, and her tenacious grasp on the wet piece of wood slipped another few centimeters. She pushed thoughts of the things beneath the waves out of her mind as she felt another splinter slice into her hand. She was having a hard enough time as it was, she didn't need stories to help scare her. She was plenty scared enough.

The water was freezing, and she had lost her shoes soon after being swept overboard from the ship. Her shawl, too, had sunk to the bottom of the water to rest with the dead, and she had few articles of clothing on her still. The ceremonial tiara made of scarlet coral from Wavecrest and designed to look like the moon rising over the sea, with a small sapphire depicting the full moon, was still on her head, thankfully keeping her sopping wet black hair out of her face, not that she would care if it were. Her silken skirt, colored to look like the same green the sea sometimes became, and which had cost her father enough to buy a poor man food to live by for a year, floated in the water with her, only a few minor tears at the edges. The same could not be said for her blouse, which had been caught on something on the ship just before she was swept overboard and had been torn severely, not even leaving her enough ragged strips to cover herself decently, though decency out here was, again, hardly a concern.

So she had simply thrown the useless rags away. And that was why she now clung to the piece of wood lacking any type of upper wear, certainly a fact that, if she ever made it back to Azure, she would fail to mention.

But again, that was if she made it back. And it wasn't looking very good right now.

Another swell rose in front of her eyes, and as harsh experience had taught her, she clutched even tighter to the board, (driving the splinters in her hands down even further) took a deep breath, and held it just as the wave crashed down on top of her. Every time before, she had gone under but almost immediately the piece of wood had bobbed back up to the surface.

This time, she felt the water wash over her, felt as she was sucked underneath the surface, still clutching the piece of wood. She felt herself sinking, sinking, and realized that the wood had gotten too heavy to float. It had probably soaked up the water gradually, and now it was too heavy to float. Releasing the now useless plank to sink down to the depths, she kicked her legs and swept with her arms. Trying to propel herself to the surface became a mad struggle as she felt the air in her lungs begin to grow stale, as her mind screamed for her to breathe. Still she did not dare open her mouth, knowing that if she did it would be all over.

Her ears were roaring, she couldn't feel her legs anymore, and her arms were getting tired. She could see the surface; see the last glimmering sliver of the moon as it filtered through the water. Tomorrow was to be a New Moon, an auspicious sign here in the West; that had been the reason the wedding had been scheduled for tomorrow evening. It was all so distant, so far away; all she had to do was let go, slip into blissful sleep. It wasn't like her life was something she would miss. The beatings were horrible anyways, and the courtly intrigues had always been so cruel and vicious. The only respite in her long and terrible life had been Hajoris...

Hajoris!

Her eyes flew open in the water as she felt herself sinking again, could feel that her mouth was open. She spit up what water she could, even though her lungs were screaming desperately for air. Hajoris. She started swimming for the surface again, desperate for air, could feel her brain and arms shrieking in protest at being asked to work again, though she had yet to take another breath of refreshing oxygen. Hajoris. She put his face above her, smiling down at her like he had right after he'd saved her...

She couldn't die on him. She just couldn't. She wanted to see him again, to tell him she was all right, to hold him and feel the warmth of his skin against hers. He deserved to know her fate, did not deserve the grief and pain born from not knowing necessarily if she was dead or not. She would not allow that. She WOULD survive, would find Hajoris, even if she told him she was all right with her dying breath.

But it was too far. Even as she struggled to get to the surface, she knew she would never make it. She still couldn't feel her legs, her arms were starting to feel like lead and were about to fall off, and the darkness was closing around her, forming a tunnel, blocking out the light around her. Still she struggled to reach the top, unable, or merely unwilling, to die with the knowledge that it would cause so much pain and suffering to someone she loved so much.

The she saw the light. It was silver, like the color of the moon, and for a fleeting instant, she was sure she was about to break through to the surface. Then she remembered the image she had seen only a few seconds before, of the sliver of the moon shining through the surface, and she realized that she was standing. She was no longer floating, even though she could still feel the water around her, and the silver light was persisting, coming from behind her. Could it be that it was some sort of horrible creature, here to devour her, and she was standing on the bottom of the ocean?

Still, she turned around, her eyes wide with the fear of what horrible, multi-toothed thing she might find waiting for her here beneath the waves. Consciously, she knew that she should be dead from lack of air by now, but her fear, combined with her lack of air, banished almost all conscience thoughts from her mind. Seeing what was behind her did little to help it recover itself.

Another woman, with eyes like miniature moons, stood right behind her, radiating the silver light from her very body. The woman's hair was silver like the moon as well, but it was her face that captivated the girl's gaze. It lacked her own opalescent skin and her face was slightly more angular, but otherwise she stared at a mirror image of herself.

"Mother," she gasped out as she felt her legs collapse beneath. Even as she fell to her knees though, she still stared up at the silver woman before her; instinctively knowing this was the being that had birthed her. She had birthed her brother as well, their father's only son, but she had died during childbirth, she knew, and she had only been a small toddler when that happened. She couldn't even remember her face afterwards, but she KNEW that this was the face that she had struggled her entire life to remember.

"Yes, my child," came the response, followed by a chuckle, all of it with a voice that defied any attempt of description. The silver woman stood before the girl, swaying ever so slightly with an effortless grace that would have normally captivated any person, but it failed to tear the girl's gaze from the silver woman's face.

"Then...that means...I'm dead," the girl asked the silver woman as she started to kneel down to face evenly with her. Finally able to find herself capable of tearing her gaze off the silver woman's face, the girl lowered it to stare at her knees, which seemed to float in darkness, as she felt the tears welling up in her eyes. They started running down her face, and fell onto the darkness where it glistened, like the stars in the night sky above.

"My child," the voice came again after a moment of silent sobbing, and she raised her head to once more face the silver woman, though she was unwilling to raise her eyes, tears still streaming from them, to meet the other's gaze. The silver woman smiled and reached forward, placing her hand just above the sobbing girl's left breast, right where her heart was. The touch was warm, not like a fire, but like the light of the moon on a cold winter's eve, and it pierced through her skin to reach down to her heart. She raised her hand to clasp that hand with its warmth as it lay on her heart, her tears stopping at the touch and her sobs subsiding.

"Can you feel the warmth in your heart? You are not dead." The silver woman, hand still on her heart, moved forward and kissed the girl on the forehead, and it felt like the touch of a midnight's summer breeze. And as the touch of her lips receded, the feeling remained on her forehead, filling the girl with more warmth. She finally raised her eyes to meet the woman's own orbs of pure silver. The woman rose to her feet as their gazes met, and as she gained her feet she spoke in that same voice as before, smiling the entire time. "That is my warmth. I give you a piece of myself to give you life. Life. To find that which you lost, long ago."

And without another word, she turned and began to walk away, though her silver glow remained.

The girl felt the water give way around her and she suddenly found her lungs able to breathe. With that first gasping breath, she started coughing, water coming up with her ragged breaths. Quickly though, she raised her head to look at the retreating figure of the silver woman.

"Wait," she croaked, her voice hoarse from screaming throughout the storm for help and now being filled with water. "Wait. Mother," she said. There was so much she wanted to ask this woman, the mother that she had always known about and inherited so much of herself from, even though she'd never met her. Her voice was steadier now, her lungs continuing to fill with air. The image of the silver woman was beginning to fade away in the distance, and the girl's cries became more desperate.

"Wait! Mother!" the woman was almost entirely gone now. The girl raised her hand, as if to catch the last fleeting images within it's grasp, but all she felt was the bitter cold air in her clutches.

"**MOTHER!!!**"

Except for the gentle sound of the surf, silence was all that greeted her. No echo, no response, nothing. Even the image of the silver woman had gone, though her silver aura remained around the girl, and the feeling of her lips still remained branded on the girl's forehead.

"No," the girl said softly, her falling back to her side and her gaze returning to look down at the blackness she rested upon. "Mother..."

Once again she felt the tears well up in her eyes, and this time she felt the full grief of her mother's death, for she had lost her a second time. This time it was not the quiet tears that had come to her eyes earlier, but tears full of grief that fell from her eyes and pooled onto the darkness like it pooled in her heart. Her sobs, also filled with grief, racked her shoulders up and down and yet she continued to call out for her mother in between her sobs. Her cries threatened to make her mute, as her hoarse throat tried to contain those cries, also filled with an incredible grief. She felt like grief was what made up her entire being, and so she put her grief into her tears and her voice, so that when she cried and shouted and sobbed her grief was expelled.

And yet it did nothing to alleviate that feeling, that grief, for no matter how much left her mouth in her cries for her mother, or how many tears that were heavy with grief fell from her eyes, there was always more. The well of grief within her would always be full, would never be empty, and she felt that she would cry and sob and shout until the end of all time. And through it all, the sound of the waves, the silver light of the woman, and the feeling of her lips on the girl's forehead remained, the few constants in her world besides the darkness that collected her grief-laden tears.

_Why do you cry?_

The girl gasped and shot her head up as she looked in front of her. The voice had been male and directly in front of her, no, closer, like it had been whispered in her ear. She was afraid that, topless and in this vulnerable state of grief, she would perhaps be considered the opportune target for a rapist. Raising her arms to cover her breasts, she continued to look around for the voice.

She looked in front of her and all she saw was the Sea spread out in front of her. But it was when she looked behind her that she gave another gasp, spun around, and began to crawl backwards, away from what she saw. There, behind her, the blackness beneath her continued up in a line that was easily taller than herself.

As she crawled back from the line that speared into the star laden sky, her mind was able to pull itself together enough to analyze what she felt she was crawling on. It felt kind of rubbery, like leather that had yet to be tanned, but it was slick from being in the water. As she continued to crawl backwards, she felt her hand dip into the cold wetness that was the Sea. Jerking her hand back, and looked behind her to see that the blackness she had been sitting atop of was resting very still in the water.

_May I ask you to move please? I am unable to breath while you remain there._

There it was again, the voice. But what it had said had confused her. Unable to breath?

She moved her skirt to look beneath her and saw a slit that went around in a circular pattern, starting at one point in the circle, continuing around, and stopping a couple of centimeters from where it had started.

Sniffing, for her tears had yet to subside completely, she wondered what it was she was sitting atop of. She reached one finger out to touch the circle, but just before her finger got there, a loud _WHOOSH_ sound came forth from it, accompanied by a spraying of water into the air several feet high.

"Whoa!" she exclaimed in surprise that was so great that she lost her balance on the slippery rubber blackness and fell back into the water. As she landed in a _splash_, she sank slowly, and she saw a giant spot of white in the blackness beside her. The white spot had something a little ways back, and she found her curiosity overriding her fear to find out what it was.

She maneuvered herself towards the back of the white spot, which was about the size of her torso. As she got to the edge of the whiteness, she realized she was looking at an eye that was only an inch or two larger than her own in diameter. It had an orange tint to it, and it was obviously focused on her, for it moved with her as she swam through the water. She could just barely make out her own reflection in the eye, the silver glow that was still around her illuminating the water so that she could make out a flipper about a foot away from her. For several seconds however, she found herself absorbed in the intelligence present within those eyes.

_Are you more comfortable in the water?_

There it was again! This time though, she realized why the voice had seemed so close. The words weren't being whispered in her ear, but being spoken in her mind! She continued to stare at the eye even as that realization came into her mind though. She had heard that some creatures could penetrate into your mind and steal your memories, but this did not feel intrusive or invasive like she suspected such a creature's mental contact would. It was , reaffirming in its touch, like being congratulated with a pat on the back by a friend.

_Who--Who are you?_ She asked in her mind, positive that somehow, whomever it was that was speaking to her would be able to hear her.

_I am I of course._

The voice sounded masculine, with a deep resonation that was typically associated with large brutes of men, but there was something else in it. A sound that brought the image of bubbles before her mind and reassured her. That was what the voice sounded like.

Of course its answer also showed that it either had misinterpreted what she had asked or that its mind worked entirely different from her own. Probably both.

_Do you have a name?_

_My...I believe "family" is the word you use for those that are of your blood, yes?_

_Yes._

_Then my "family" once called me Singer of Honorable Melodies._

_Once? They call you that no longer?_

_They...no longer call me that, no._

_Then what should I name you now?_

_It is not the place of one who did not birth me to give me a new name._

_Not even yourself?_

_No. I am no longer Singer of Honorable Melodies, but no one who is able to name me has done so yet._

_I see. How am I to refer to you then?_

You seem very good at asking question, but do not seem so good at answering them. 

Even in the water the girl felt the warmth flush to her cheeks as she blushed. She realized that she had entirely forgotten about the voice's first question, the one that had started this whole confrontation. She also realized that she was running low on breath. Tearing herself away from the eye underneath the water, she broke the surface of the water and once again felt the relief of air flowing into lungs desperate for it. Swimming back to the edge of the blackness, she started her climb back on top of it. She returned to her mental conversation in the meantime.

You asked if I was crying? 

_No. I knew you cried, for I could feel your tears as they fell upon my back. I asked you what it was that saddens you so greatly that you cried._

The girl was silent in her thoughts for a moment as she mulled that over, and in the time it took her to think she was back atop the blackness. This time she found that she was exhausted, and she lay down on her side on the rubbery surface. She thought as she lay there, staring at the waves as they lapped at the black form she lie upon, but before she could "speak" again, the voice did.

_It is not necessary for you to answer right now. I will instead ask you a different question._

_Very well._

_Do _you_ possess a name?_

Silence again reigned supreme as the girl thought about that. In her struggle to survive after being swept off the ship, she had never thought about her name, and for a moment, she could not remember it. But then the image of Hajoris appeared before her mind's eye, it all came back to her.

"Vesalia," she said aloud, though she knew that the voice had heard her all the same. "My name is Vesalia."

_Vesalia. It is interesting that you should be named that._

_And why is that?_

_In my language, Vesalia translates into "Seeker of the Lost."_

Again Vesalia was silent. She rolled atop her back to gaze up at the stars that filled the night sky, and saw again the small sliver of the moon that was present before the night of the new moon.

Were you the one who rescued me? 

Yes. I came upon while you still clung to that piece of wood atop the surface, and I watched you. When you joined me beneath the waves I bore silent witness to your desperate struggle to regain the surface, but when I saw that you would never make it...

The voice paused, and she chose to honor his silence just as he had hers. She simply continued to gaze up at the night sky.

I cannot tell you yet how hard it was for me to rescue you. I carry sadness within me, much like yourself I am sure. And as I am sure the case is with you, a personal matter I do not wish to discuss right now causes this sadness.

"Fair enough," she said aloud, covering her mouth as she gave a yawn of exhaustion. "When I get around to telling you, you can tell me. No sooner, no later. But...until then, can you tell me what it is I should call you?"

Silence for a moment and then, _You may call me Lamenter of Sadness for now._

"Then I thank you, Lamenter of Sadness. I am unsure if I will ever be able to repay you fully for what you did today, but I know that I will try my best."

The voice was silent after that, and again Vesalia respected his silence. After a moment, she rolled back on her side and tried her best to cover herself with her arms for protection against the night cold. Strangely enough though, she found that she was not all that bothered by the cold at the moment.

As she felt the physical and mental exhaustion from her recent trials take a hold over her, she gave another yawn and closed her eyes, letting the gentle sound of the waves lapping against the darkness she lay upon lull her to sleep.

"Sleep safely, Lamenter of Sadness," she said in her last moment of consciousness.

Just before the darkness enveloped her, she heard him respond. _And you, Seeker. And you._


End file.
